This article explores site-specific heritage questions of the contemporary cultural practice of festivals of jazz – a key transatlantic music form – by bringing together three areas for discussion and development: questions of slavery heritage and legacy; the location, built environment and (touristic) offer of the historic city; and the contemporary British jazz festival, its programme and the senses or silences of (historical) situatedness in the festival package. Other artistic forms, cultural practices and festivals are involved in self-reflexive efforts to confront their own pasts; such are discussed as varying processes of the decolonisation of knowledge and culture. This provides the critical and cultural context for consideration of the jazz festival in the Georgian urban centre. Preliminary analysis of relevant jazz festivals’ programmes, commissions and concerts leads to interrogating the relationship – of silence, of place – between jazz in Britain, historic or heritage locations and venues, and the degree or lack of understanding of the transatlantic slave trade. The heritage centres clearly associated with the slave trade that also have significant (jazz) festivals referred to include Bristol, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Lancaster, Liverpool, London, and Manchester.

Text below from the LJF website. Academic speakers through the day include Prof Walter van de Leur, Prof Andrew Dubber, Dr Nick Gebhardt. I’m chairing the panel on jazz festivals, with John Cumming (Serious/London Jazz Festival), Steve Mead (Manchester Jazz Festival). Gonna be a good day!

THINKING WITH JAZZ

Come and tune into a series of panel sessions that investigate the structure, resonance and importance of jazz in today’s cultural environment. Co-hosted with Tony Whyton and George McKay, leading lights in the team that produced the international research project, Rhythm Changes – Jazz Cultures and European Identities, this programme forms the centrepiece of a new collaboration between the Festival and the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Connected Communities programme.